What the ESPN FPI Says About WVU's Chances to Upset Penn State

West Virginia is receiving a little respect from the computers over at ESPN.

Schuyler Callihan | Aug 28, 2024

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West Virginia Mountaineers

This Saturday, the West Virginia Mountaineers will welcome in No. 8 Penn State for the biggest season-opener in Morgantown since 1998 when they hosted the No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes. Even with it being an early kick, you can expect the WVU faithful to show up, be loud, and make it challenging for the invaders from the north.

According to the ESPN FPI, Penn State has a 77.6% chance to win while West Virginia has just a 22.4% chance.

To be quite honest, the computers are giving the Mountaineers more love than I would have expected. 22% isn't high whatsoever, but when you take into account how highly it thinks of Penn State and the average season it predicts for WVU, it's a relatively strong percentage.

No one really knows the formula that the ESPN FPI works off of, but the one thing it probably doesn't include is how a team does in a similar settings. For example, this game in particular is a season-opener and the Mountaineers have lost three straight openers - all to Power Four schools, all in "rivalry" games. The coaching staff is well aware of that stat and it's the sole reason why they opted to have a more physical fall camp than the ones they've operated in years past.

"If you asked any coach, we’d love to ease into it," said WVU head coach Neal Brown earlier this month. "We’ve played a couple of FCS first games and those are positive. You learned a little bit more about your team before you play a rivalry game. But that’s not what we have, so it’s like, eh. It is what it is. We play Penn State, they’re a top ten team in the country. I was looking at a bunch of draft boards and I went over this with our team the other day, there’s a whole lot of Penn State guys listed. FOX is probably going to kick it off at probably 12:06 or 12:07 on August 31st and we better be ready. It doesn’t matter what I’d like for it to be or who I’d like for it to be against. We play Penn State and we got to perform. The expectation is that we will and that we’ll perform at a high level.”

An interesting thing to note, however, is Penn State hasn't been all that sharp when opening the season on the road under James Franklin. They're 2-2 in his tenure in these games, winning by an average of five points in their two wins. They beat Purdue 35-31 in 2022, beat Wisconsin 16-10 in 2021, lost to Indiana 36-35 in 2020, and lost to Temple 27-10 in 2015.

West Virginia and Penn State will kick things off at 12 p.m. EST on FOX.

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